INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; BP Amoco's Leader Remakes an Oil Giant, Again

For a man in a hurry, Sir John Browne is, by all appearances, remarkably composed.

Sir John, the chief executive of BP Amoco P.L.C., is a soft-spoken and charming man who rarely appears ruffled. He is fond of ballet and pre-Columbian art and often listens to Puccini operas at BP Amoco's Edwardian headquarters in London. For an oil executive, he is unusually sensitive to environmental concerns and has even had dinner with the leaders of Greenpeace.

Yet Sir John, 50, is also known for a relentless drive as he pushes BP Amoco to take on the behemoths in the industry, Mobil, Exxon and Royal Dutch/Shell Group. Now, just three months after the Amoco acquisition, he is poised to pursue another rapid overhaul now that his company is acquiring the Atlantic Richfield Company for more than $27 billion. ARCO's board approved the deal last night, an executive close to the talks said. BP Amoco's board approved the deal on Tuesday. ARCO stockholders are expected to receive 0.82 American depositary receipt of BP Amoco for each of their shares. The companies are expected to make an announcement this morning.

Sir John declined requests for an interview. Still, based on his past speeches and interviews and on conversations with other industry executives, it is clear that Sir John's strategy is to transform BP Amoco into a company that is at much at home in Silicon Valley as in the Oil Belt. He has already shaped an organization where there is almost no layer of middle management and constant pressure to do better.

''This is a hands-on oilman who has mastered what was going in Silicon Valley,'' said a manager at BP Amoco who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''He adopted American ways and the American work ethic. He's not someone who came up through the English system.''

Indeed, the new BP Amoco being constructed looks like no other oil company. In contrast to the elaborate, centralized structure of most oil companies, BP Amoco is managed by a about a dozen executives. They ride herd over more than 140 units, some of which are still in the process of being set up.

The units are intended to be small enough that managers and their staffs get to know each other and what is expected of them. And each unit's performance is reviewed quarterly.

''He has a genius for devising motivational structures to get people to do what he wants them to do,'' said Fergus McLeod, an analyst with BT Alex. Brown in London.

It was while pursuing a master's degree in business at Stanford University in the 1970's that Sir John got to know Andrew S. Grove, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation, the world's dominant chip maker. Mr. Grove, BP Amoco executives say, made the young BP executive aware of the vast changes coming in information technology and its implications for corporations.

Since becoming chief executive of British Petroleum in 1995, Sir John has pushed to knit together the far-flung operations of BP Amoco by means of thousands of personal computers into what he describes as a ''virtual team network.'' The system allows widely scattered employees to work together closely and provides them with up-to-date information on other units.

He has also encouraged employees to set up home pages on the World Wide Web, where they describe the skills they have to offer and share information about technical details such as ways to better use lubricants for drilling. The goal is to give managers and employees immediate access to skills and experience that they can apply to their own businesses.

In addition to an emphasis on information technology, BP Amoco has sought to emulate the entrepreneurial ethos of Silicon Valley.

Each unit manager has a performance contract in which financial and other goals are detailed and which are closely monitored by the top executives, who will intervene if problems come up.

In a speech at the Yale School of Management in September, Sir John, noting that British Petroleum's pending merger with Amoco would make it one of the 10 largest industrial companies in the world, said that organization in small units was the key to making a global company work.

''We've learned over time that people like to work in relatively small units, where they can equate effort and results,'' he said. ''Where they can see what they're achieving.''

Each of the units has ''operational freedom,'' he said. ''They are running their own businesses.''

But his unflinching cost-cutting has left some executives bewildered and bitter at methods that leave little room for the compromise. So far, the reorganization at the newly acquired Amoco has borne mixed results. Sir John has signaled that he is impatient with speed of integrating Amoco and has stepped up the pace of job cuts.

Indeed, Sir John is described by executives and analysts as being obsessed with accountability. Many managers have felt his steady gaze and deep knowledge of the oil business when he wants to know why a unit is not meeting his standards or, conversely, is doing so well.

''If something goes wrong, they can quickly find out before the end of each quarter,'' Mr. McLeod, the BT Alex. Brown analyst, said. ''If something goes right, there is a structure where it can be shared with everybody very quickly.''

Sir John, the son of an English executive of British Petroleum and a Romanian mother, spent part of his childhood in Iran, where he had an intimate look at the oil industry. After leaving Cambridge University in 1966 with degree in physics, he joined British Petroleum.

The company sent him to Alaska as part of the team in Anchorage that helped bring the vast fields in Prudhoe Bay into production. He spent most his early career in the the United States, serving as executive vice president and chief financial officer of the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in Cleveland, in which British Petroleum had acquired a controlling interest.

At the American company, Sir John reined in big spending on exploration and cut the staff. He returned to London in 1989 to revamp British Petroleum's exploration arm. He scaled back exploration to 10 countries from 30 and cut the work force by half. His strategy was to focus on a few big fields and then try to cut the cost of extracting the oil.

His success as head of the exploration arm helped British Petroleum recover from a huge debt burden and underperforming businesses like refining. When he became chief executive, he surprised many in the industry by forming a joint venture with Mobil to improve refining and marketing in Europe. He again stunned the industry in August, with the announcement of the Amoco bid.

For his work in helping turn around British Petroleum, he was knighted last year by Queen Elizabeth II.